The Da Vinci Code

Rating:
Summary: Brown seems to use a formula, but it's a good one
Review: With all the hype about this book, I was looking forward to reading it, however, I got ahold of Brown's Angels and Demons first and read that first. The Da Vinci Code was very good, but I was a bit disappointed that it seemed to follow a formula that I had seen almost exactly in Angels and Demons with regard to the characters and plot development.

Despite the formulaic style of the writing that annoyed me somewhat, the book was still very good. As in Angels and Demons, I don't know how much of the information regarding the subject matter is accurate, but it worked well for the purposes of the story, and I think that's most important in fiction. Brown does a good job of withholding and revealing information at the right times so you are always wanting to know more, but you find out enough to not get frustrated.

If you've read Angels and Demons, you may find this a little too similar, but it's still good. If you haven't read Angels and Demons, than this will be much better. I will probably read more of Brown's books, but likely not anything with Robert Langdon in it.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Riveting!
Review: With all the hype around this book, I had to find out for myself. I didn't really have time to sit down and read it, so I got the audio cassettes. The reader (Colin Stinton) is excellent at reading the story. He has many different voices that he changes to for different charachters. I find this quite astonishing acutally, because sometimes, I can't tell that it is the same person speaking all these voices.
The story line is magnificent. It is a fast paced novel from start to finish. The only disappoinment I have is when it ended...now I have to find another book as entertaining as this one!
You will not be disappointed with the audio version of this book. The reader keeps you going and connected to the charachters and Dan Brown's story is compelling!

Rating:
Summary: Nice Beach Read But the Research Is Really Bad
Review: With all the hype surrounding this book, it was inevitable that I would end up reading it. The book has achieved a life of it's own, much as last summer's Alice Sebold The Lovely Bones did. People have passed it along by word of mouth and intimated that here was a fresh and bold new mystery about intellectual ideas. After having read it, I can say that, depending on the attitude you approach the book with, this is either fun pulp fiction, or disappointing and overblown.

I must say that as mind candy, I enjoyed the book. It is not at all great literature, but it is a page-turner and a fun read. The characters are pretty generic, with very little to distinguish them from a dozen other characters in mass fiction novels. Change the lead character, Robert Langdon from an Art History professor to an intelligence expert and you have Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Change him to a lawyer, and you have any number of John Grisham heroes. There is very little to distinguish him from any other popular novel hero. The same goes for Sophie Neveau or any of the other characters in the book. But the plotting is fast paced and keep you going. If the ciphers are obvious and some of the characters are obvious red herrings, and the prose style is a bit stilted, still the book keeps you entertained to the end.

The problems of the book come on the intellectual side. The central premise of the Holy Grail history is based on several popular "Chariots of the Gods?" style books...Holy Blood, Holy Grail; The Templar Revelation; and a few others thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, the views outlined in these books are presented as representing the consensus of scholarly opinion on Grail symbology, rather than as what they are...popularized potboilers that outline minority opinions...opinions that have not stood up well in peer review, either in historical or in Art circles. And when Brown delves into theology he makes a large number of really egregious errors, errors that even proponents of the Gnostic Gospels don't make. He claims that the Gnostic Gospels are the "original" Gospels and that the standard canon of the Bible is a later attempt by the Church to distort an earlier version of Christianity. He claims that Constantine determined that Christ should be considered God and thereby wiped away any of the "real" gospels, creating the fictions we know as the standard canon. Unfortunately, none of this is true. The earliest we can date any of the non-canonical writings is the second century CE, while the Gospel of Mark has been pretty conclusively dated to the decade of the 60's CE. Even the latest additions to the Bible in modern scholarship predate most of the Gnostic texts by at least 80 years. Further more, Constantine did convene the council of Nicea as an attempt to create at least the semblance of uniformity in Christianity after the Edict of Toleration, the belief that Christ was "fully human and fully divine" predates Constantine by a full two hundred years...and the belief in the divinity of Jesus goes back at least to the Gospel of John, around 95 CE. The above is not to deny the Gnostic Gospels their due...they represent many of the competing strains of Christianity which existed in the Church's first 300 years, until they were forced underground by the growing power of the hierarchical Orthodox church. But the simplistic views stated in The Da Vinci Code paint a hugely distorted picture of something that deserves more thought and more study.

The second objection I have to the book is the portrait of the Catholic Church and particularly the Opus Dei. Though Brown tries at the end to lighten his portrait of the Church, he mostly presents a distorted image of the Church as the enemy of truth. Though undoubtedly, the Church has been guilty of some pretty awful things in it's history, in Brown's hands the Church ends up as a caricature...a paper tiger. Also, the portrait of the Opus Dei in the book is based on only the most negative images of the organization. Opus Dei is controversial, undoubtedly. But to create such a ham fisted portrayal of the organization lends no help to either side in the debate over the organization, turning it from a questionable Traditionalist organization to a secretive, Jim Jones-like cult. And as the disturbed assassin, Silas, Brown has created perhaps one of the least believable characters in the book.

All that being said, the book is a fun read, as long as you can approach it as just another thriller and don't believe all the genius hype. If you are interested in a really good, well-researched book about the same Grail lore, I would highly recommend Umberto Eco's vastly superior Foucault's Pendulum. Eco takes similar theories, but approaches them with much more art and skill to create a truly magical book. Read it when you want your mind stimulated and leave the Da Vince Code for beach reading.... that's where it belongs.

Rating:
Summary: Open your mind and see the possibilities!!!
Review: With an open mind and willingness to see and accept beyond what is considered the standard way of life, "The Da Vinci Code" has opened new ground.

Am I saying ALL of what was written in the book is an absolute 100% fact??? No, but a lot of it does have the ringing of truth to it. You can't help but question all the discrepencies the author has put forth and want to know the truth. I guess it all really depends on how open the person is and how serious they are to find the real truth. But, make no mistake, the clues and discrepencies are all there which leads to the oh so many questions.

For example, the questions as to how the church really began and sustained for all those centuries is a major question. Maybe no one really wants those questions answered, but a lot of us do even if you don't like the answers. Once again, open your mind to the possibilities.

Also, the origins of the bible's origin have a ton of questions behind them and a truly open minded person will see the truth behind what we, as a society, have been force fed since birth. Just look. Did God really, from heaven, fax us a copy of the one true bible??? No, I guess not, and the author does an excellent job explaining this.

Dan Brown has taken all these mysteries and questions and ran with it. "The Da Vinci Code" is a fantastic book. Very deep. Very enlightening. Very thrilling. Very moving.

Close minded people may say the book is horrid, evil, heretic... etc, but it isn't. THE BOOK IS AN EYE OPENER IF YOU AREN'T AFRAID TO SEE WHAT IS REALLY THERE.

I am reminded a lot of the fantastic book "The Mists of Avalon" and the battle between between christianity and the nature/pagan religion.

Take a moment and read "Da Vinci Code" and see if anything at all makes you question what you already believe to be true. If so, then Mr. Brown has done his job.

Rating:
Summary: unexpected and intelligent
Review: With apologies to Seabiscuit, this may be the best read of the past year. Dan Brown exhibits a dramatic flair for the "intelligent mystery". The best thing about this book and it's author is that the dialogue or science is never "dumbed down" for the audience. The highly original premise of this book, when combined with factual groups and real locations, makes for a very compelling read. If you liked this book, you should check out the authors prior work Angel & Demons.

Rating:
Summary: Experience the Thrill & Adventure of Deciphering the Code
Review: With creativity and artistic flair, Dan Brown, weaves into this novel a mystery that is 2,000 years old and actually much much older, in fact, dating back to the Eygptians and beyond. He combines fact and fiction into a labyrinth that leaves the reader spell-bound and a bit disoriented after the reading experience. Hesitant to read this book, I thought, "Da Vinci Code", sounds too complicated to me. However, I was reassured by friends it was a mystery book, not a cipher text. I took the challenge and read it ...

This book turns into a nonstop adventure beginning with a murder in the Louvre, in Paris. It culminates with a visit to Isaac Newton's tomb in West Minster Abbey, and another to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland ... intriguing places that hold the clues to solving the original mystery. Nicole Neveu, the neice of the murdered curator of the Louvre, and Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of Religious symbology, are thrown together through an unusual communication left by the deceased, Jacques Sauniere. Very soon they realize the curator brought them together to reveal to them, "the secret" which solely he possessed. However, to prevent the wrong people from discovering "the secret", he shrouded it in unusual text, obscure verses, symbolism, and a mysterious box, that contained yet another veiled clue, an encrypted "keystone". But the Opus Dei, a controversial devout Catholic sect also wanted to unravel the secret ... The clues to the mystery were hidden in Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings, within ancient symbols from a goddess cult, and within the architecture of the Knights Templar.

This is one book taht will keep you on the edge of your seat guessing "what happens next". It will twist and turn your mind, as new clues are revealed. You will experience more depths and layers than any other novel ... ever. It is an artistic masterpiece which questions some fundamental human instincts. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

Rating:
Summary: Incredible revelations!... Not!
Review: With much hoopla and praise behind it, and an intriguing concept for the plot, I picked up Brown's The Da Vinci Code with enthusiasm. The premise is that there is an incredible secret that the Catholic Church will stop at nothing to suppress, and warring secret societies plot to possess this powerful information. The secret has been protected and kept by such luminaries throughout history as Isaac Newton, Dan Quayle, and, yes, Leonardo Da Vinci (I'm being facetious about one of those).

Promising start, but from there is all goes downhill. The main charactors are intensely familiar from airport novels galore - the intelligent and unconventionally beautiful heroine (whose strong, clear eyes keep flashing), and the intelligent and unconventionally handsome hero (who keeps giving lopsided grins). These cookie-cutter charactors lack real depth, and instead are given quirks with pat explanations that well-written charactors don't need.
The plot jerks around, with one cliff-hanging chapter after another, with so little pay-off that it comes off as just manipulative rather than honestly suspenseful. And here's the big disappointment: the revelations - about Church, Da Vinci, and the Holy Grail - are all completely passe. We knew that already! Or at least you should know all this information already if you had spent at least a little time reading about Church, art, or feminist history. Or even if you watch the Discovery Channel on a semi-regular basis!

So my advise is: Go buy a book on Church history, art history, or Barbara G. Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets if you're interested in this kind of thing. Unless you can't read about history without a mad albino monk villian and a heroine who walks with long, fluid strides to liven things up - in which case, fair enough, this book is for you.

Rating:
Summary: illogical, inconsistent and inaccurate
Review: With the promise of a thriller complete with secret societies and cold-blooded murders, and a subject matter of no less than Christianity and the Church, the book is intriguing. Indeed it is rich in "historical" tid bits and art symbolism, all suggesting a different way of looking at Christianity and the Divine. I am not an expert in art or symbolism, and I read Brown's presuppositions with interest (albeit not without serious questions on some). Likewise the puzzles (cryptex) are fascinating. His religious assertions, however, are off the wall. I agree that throughout the history of the Church, the feminine aspect of the Divine has been suppressed. But Brown's suggestion that this is embodied in Mary Magdalene (if such a person in fact ever existed), perpetuated by a cult that has to be kept in secrecy for ages is not logical. There are other points: such as his theory about the bloodline of Jesus (why France?), Mary instead of John at the Last Supper, Mary Magdalene as the Holy Grail, even the symbolism in Disney's Lion King (a real long stretch) -- all thrown together to make a good story.

And yet the story sinks. The plot is convoluted, and full of illogical inconsistencies. Right from the start with the murder of the curator of the Louvre: he and the other keepers of the secret were killed after they supposedly told the murderer the secret. But knowing that these are the highest members of a secret society sworn to keep the secret to death, how could the murderer be so naive as not to suspect that what they told him might not be the truth? (so that killing them would completely close the possibility of finding the true secret). If the curator was able to arrange a very complex sign before he died to pass on the secret to his granddaughter, why didn't he add the name of the murderer for the police (who were not interested in solving the secret)? The two investigations were separate. But of course if he did, the police would have no reasons to chase the two scientists. The chase started in the middle of the night and involved interrogations, solving complex puzzles, escaping the police, driving all around Paris, two long stops, being driven to the countryside and then to Versailles, a very long discussion on the holy grail, a murder attempt, and yet by the time the police closed in it was still dark? And so on and so forth; illogical actions (like having barely escaped the murder attempt, why bring the murderer along to England?) just to support a twist in the story.

One can certainly read the book as entertainment and enjoy the ride. But it is a bumpy ride if one reads it with a critical mind. Historical "facts"? Art history? Brown is yet to convince me.

Rating:
Summary: Controversial and compelling...
Review: With the recommendation of family and friends, I finally read The Da Vinci Code. This book has become the hot topic of debate and seems to be quite controversial in the religious forefront. Some might say this is just another crazy conspiracy theory against the church or just another wild goose chase for the Holy Grail. But, this book is so much more. It opens the door for many to understand our history closer to the way it happened versus the way it was previously written. It challenges the MEN of the church, NOT Christianity. I am a Christian and yet, I found this book to be the simple voice spoken to the common person bringing forth truths that have been buried for centuries. This book teaches its own lesson just by the writing of it: Look past the characters towing the story along and read the real message. That applies to religion as well. It doesn't matter why you read this book (the suspense factor, the controversial enticement, the religious tinge, the information, or just because) and it doesn't even matter if you believe what it says, but, READ IT!!

Rating:
Summary: Exciting and very well written.
Review: Without a doubt, The Davinci Code is one of the most talked about novels of the year and for good reason; this is an outstanding book, exciting, mentally stimulating and very well done.

The plot has symbologist Robert Langdon as a suspect in the murder of a Louvre museum curator.

To find the real killer, Langdon must decipher clues that he finds hidden within art and artifacts while evading a secret society that wants him dead.

You won't want to put this book down! It is outstanding!